Building record MAB16915 - FORGLEN HOUSE

Mansion house with walled garden, still in use.

Mansion house with walled garden, still in use. The house was designed by James Smith of Aberdeen in circa 1840. It is a three-storey Tudor mansion built on site of, and possibly incorporating, an earlier house. It is asymmetrical, with corner and square off-centre towers around a central courtyard. Built of rubble whinstone, harled with cream ashlar dressings with Turriff sandstone dressings to the rear. There is a moulded string course between the first and second floor of the south-east and north-east fronts. The principal rooms at the first have taller windows with ashlar mullions and transoms, within canted bays with cornice and parapet with ball finials. The second floor windows break the eaves in gabled dormerheads. All windows have stone mullions and transoms. The principal south-east elevation is near symmetrical. The E-plan frontage about a central canted bay which is extended to the south by an additional bay and a four-storey octagonal tower. The outer advanced bays have Jacobean gables, central canted bay with shaped gable and corbelled obelisk, capped finials. The entrance is to the left of centre in a projecting Tudor porch with round-arched doorway with stepped hoodmould containing a date plaque. It is flanked by polygonal clasping towers capped with ogee finials and a crenellated blocking course with central armorial. The stair tower rises behind the main block, containing a lighting stair built on a square-plan with three-light, round-headed, hoodmoulded windows, and a balustraded parapet with corner ball finials. The south-west elevation is five-bay, probably incorporating part of the earlier house. It terminates in an advanced gabled bay adjoining an octagonal tower to the south. A pyramidal roofed square tower is to the west. Off-centre is a two-storey canted bay. Lying to the north-west of the house is a late 19th century C-listed walled garden (NJ65SE0119), with a gardener's cottage beyond it (NJ65SE0118). See NJ65SE0156 for designed landscape, NJ65SE0160 for Abercromby Monument.

Period Notes
Built 1840-5. Elements of classical 1800 predecessor. Mausoleum 1852.

Jan 1 1990 , AAS/GR/90/CT447-56,471-72, AAS/GR/90/CT447-56,471-72 (Ground Photograph). SAB32814.

Jan 19 1990 , JR 6-15, JR 6-15 (Ground Photograph). SAB33761.

Jul 7 1993 , AAS/93/10/G22/11-13, AAS/93/10/G22/11-13 (Air-oblique Photograph). SAB14659.

Jul 12 2010 , AAS/10/3/DG2010-14, AAS/10/3/DG2010-14 (Air-oblique Photograph). SAB13111.

Mar 1 2002 , GR/02/CT48-56, GR/02/CT48-56 (Ground Photograph). SAB17813.

SDD, n.d., BLDS OF ARCH & HIST INTEREST, FORGLEN 5 (Bibliographic reference). SAB1827.

Record last edited

Feb 27 2025 10:39AM